Number of British Mammals

[gromley]

Hello,

I was just watching an episode of Alan Titchmarsh's Natural History of Britain - where he quotes the number of British Mammals as 31 (compared with only 20 in Ireland but 52 in France).

This struck me as a surprising low number, so I had a sniff around the t'internet.

WikipediaList of mammals of Great Britain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia appears to list 77 (if I counted correctly.)

Does anyone recognise the number 31? And if so I presume some of the sub species have been grouped together - do you know a list of how they are grouped to get to 31?

TIA

Gromley

[Naturenutz]

interesting question , i wonder how they got that figure.

[aeshna5]

I guess the question would need qualifying. Does it include cetaceans around our coast, vagrants, established exotics,etc?

[RobSutton]

The Mammal Society website lists 66 terrestrial species (inc seals), 12 Cetaceans seen often enough to be considered residents and 11 vagrants - various bats and seals.

The 66 includes feral goat, sheep, cat , horse, wild boar/pig and cattle and long term escapees or introductions including red-necked wallaby, reindeer and other deer but as it's quite an old list (2003) doesn't include beaver or other Cetaceans seen rarely like the northern bottle-nosed whale that turned up in the Thames.

[The Woodman]

The Mammal Society need to update their list (2003)!

The recently discovered Alcathoe's bat is not on the list of Chiroptera.